How Well Do You Love Yourself?

I want to ask you a question: Do you love yourself?
Take a minute to think about it. It’s an important question because your answer will determine how much love you are able to give to others. You see, if you don’t love yourself in a healthy, balanced way, then you won’t be able to spread the love of God to those around you because you can’t give away something you don’t have to begin with.
Now, I’m not talking about a selfish, self-centered kind of love for yourself that is arrogant and puffed up. That is not what I’m saying. There is a balanced way to develop a godly appreciation for who you are and the abilities God has given you.
I talk about this a lot because I think one of the biggest problems we have today is how we feel about ourselves. It seems many people have a broken record playing in their head that keeps repeating, “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?”
One reason for this is we compare ourselves to other people and wonder why we can’t look or act like they do. Or we believe that God is mad at us for some reason…and then fall into the trap of thinking we need to try harder to measure up.
Don’t Be Misled
The devil wants us to feel bad about ourselves. He tries to mess with our thinking so we are always wondering why something is wrong with us. And many times we make the mistake of getting mad at ourselves because of it.
But God’s Word says that those who are in Christ have been made righteous. Second Corinthians 5:21 (AMP) says, “For our sake He made Christ [virtually] to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in and through Him we might become…the righteousness of God [what we ought to be, approved and acceptable and in right relationship with Him, by His goodness].”
I like the Amplified version of this verse because it helps us understand the meaning of righteousness. As the verse says, it means that in Christ, we are as we ought to be. God created us. He approves and accepts us by His love and goodness.
Get Completely in God’s Will
As soon as you accept Christ, His love is poured into your heart.  In fact, He loved you before you ever accepted Him as your Savior.
I really want you to get this because the fact that God loves you is one of the most important truths you need to know. Loving God and then yourself in a healthy, balanced way is the first step toward fulfilling your destiny and becoming a vessel of God’s love so you can spread His love to others. It’s also the key to having everything Jesus died for you to have, like His righteousness, peace and joy.

A good place to start growing in the area of balanced, godly self-love that includes a healthy attitude about yourself is by meditating on Ephesians 1:4-5 (NLT): “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.”
Remember that God loves you unconditionally. He created your temperament, your talents, and all your other traits. But we all have specific areas we can grow in and things to work on. That’s okay. The Holy Spirit is willing and able to help you grow in areas of weakness. Like I often say, “I may not be where I want to be, but thank God I’m not where I used to be!”
Wherever you are in your relationship with God, know that He has singled you out and chosen you to be His child. He is pleased with how He made you and His love surrounds you. You are the apple of His eye.

Source: Joyce Meyer

Quote of the day

Be happy...Again I say Be Happy!!!!!

3 Business Tips That Can Secure Your Relationship

By all accounts, you’re a successful business person. You’ve put a lot of thought and work into moving ahead and now you’re reaping the rewards.
For some people, though, professional success can come at the expense of personal relationships.  But that doesn’t have to happen to you.  In fact, the very same habits that propel you to business success can work wonders in your romantic life.
Employ these 3 workplace habits and to make the most of your date night.
1. Keep Your Appointments
You didn’t become successful by constantly rescheduling your important business meetings. Honor the time you’ve set aside for your significant other in the same way by keeping your appointments.  Your commitment to spend time together will keep your love going no matter how busy your work schedule gets.
2. Have An Agenda
The most productive business meetings operate by an agenda, and the same is true for date night. Have a concrete plan for how you want your date night to proceed. Don’t be afraid to take the lead here, your partner will appreciate your thoughtfulness.  This doesn’t mean tossing spontaneity aside.  Rather, a clear plan for your night out will allow you to be spontaneous without running the risk of missing out on what you’ve already scheduled.
3. Conduct A Post-Op
Post-op meetings are important after any project is completed. They give your team the chance to identify what did and didn’t work well.  Your date nights should be approached the same way. What was the highlight of the date? What should we try again and what do we want to reconsider? Conducting a post-op demonstrates you're committed to improving the quality of your relationship, even if it means admitting some mistakes were made.
Increase your measure of happiness by translating your successful business habits into your personal life and watch your partner love you more for it.

Source: TD JAKES

How Internet Porn is Creating A Generation of Men Desensitised to Real Life Sex

Porn-induced erectile dysfunction is becoming increasingly widespread. A masculinity expert says he fears heavy internet porn usage may have left up to one in 10 young men with erection problems.
Dr Andrew Smiler said that easy access to endless streaming porn is leaving healthy young men with the sexual problem.
He told The Independent : “The guys I see, most of them are between 13 and 25. The vast majority are, for the most part, the picture of physical health.
“So if I’m masturbating to porn once a day for 15 minutes but I do that every day for five years, I’m pretty well on my way to being an expert to having an orgasm to porn.”
He warned that because many heavy users are young, the habit becomes even more concerning.

“If I’m 17 and that is 90% of my sexual orgasmic experience, then I’ve put a lot of effort into that particular variety/flavour of sexual development but I’ve put in very little time developing my sexuality with another person, so it makes it more challenging to become aroused to another person and you find yourself in this other direction which is often very different to sex with a person.”

A 2014 study found that one third of men watch porn every day, and given that porn consumption has been increasing over the past few years - largely due to the advent of the smartphones and super-fast data connections - it’s likely that number is now even higher.
Dr Angela Gregory, psychosexual therapist at Nottingham University Hospital, said: “Men are becoming both physically and psychologically desensitised to normal sexual stimulation and arousal with a sexual partner.”
For some men, however, they develop hypersexuality and are constantly aroused. “It’s like an itch they can’t scratch and is always on their minds,” Dr Gregory said.

Despite the prevalence of porn-consumption, as of yet there is no official diagnosis for “porn addiction” so Dr Smiler, author of Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy, doesn’t like to use the term. Gregory, on the other hand, believes some men
do develop very real addictions to porn.
She frequently sees young men with erection problems but often they don’t make the link to porn as it’s deemed so normal to watch it.
Fortunately, porn-induced erectile dysfunction is fixable, most easily if you’re a healthy young male: “If you can stop [masturbating], you can reboot your system to normal arousal,” Gregory explains.
She recommends going cold turkey for 90 days - some men find it easy, others really struggle. And Dr Smiler points out that you have to retrain both your body and your mind, so he talks to a lot of his clients about what they find attractive.
Whilst porn-induced erectile dysfunction is a huge problem for men who regularly masturbate to porn, simply watching it is also creating an unrealistic idea of sex in their minds.

“In porn, sex always happens very easily, everybody has a great time and nobody ever refuses or says ‘I don’t want to do that’,” Dr Smiler said.
“But in reality, people aren’t always in the mood. Sometimes you fall over when you're taking off your pants and it’s funny. But none of that happens on screen and so guys go in expecting it to all be easy and they don’t know what to do,” he explained.
There’s also the issue of the majority of people not looking like porn stars. Dr Smiler, who works predominantly with young men aged 13-25 and wrote a book on masculinity, believes high porn consumption “alters perceptions and expectations of who is attractive,” meaning a lot of these men find they develop extremely narrow tastes.
Gregory believes that as porn becomes more hardcore, explicit and ubiquitous, more men will suffer from intimacy problems and sexual compulsion.
So is there a safe amount of porn a man can watch? It really depends on the person, but Dr Smiler believes that a man can masturbate to porn once to three times a week and “it’s not going to have any more effect on his sex life than 50 years ago when guys were masturating to posters of pin-up girls.”
But when you find yourself masturbating to porn every day - and that’s the only way you masturbate - that’s when you’re heading for problems.

Source: Rachel Hosie

The Dangers of New Marijuana Trend-Dabbing

The latest marijuana trend is a much more dangerous version of the drug and could even be deadly. The Doctors investigate the dangers of dabbing.
Dabbing is the vaporization of marijuana concentrate, which can have 4 times as much THC than just marijuana in a dry form. The oily concentrate – often called shatter, wax, or crumble – is heated with a blow torch, which then creates a large amount of smoke. The user then inhales the smoke to get high. Dabbing can create much more of a euphoric and intense high compared to the usual way people smoke.

Dabs are popular because they often contain up to 70-90% THC, which is much more than the typical cannabis flower. Dabs are sometimes called butane honey oil, budder, shatter or wax.
Dabs are usually smoked using a water pipe (bong) or vaporizer pen.
When using a water pipe, a blowtorch is used to preheat the heating surface, which is referred to as a “nail”. The nail is usually made of titanium or glass. After the nail is heated, the concentrate is “dabbed” on the surface, resulting in a vapor that can be inhaled.

Drug expert Dr. David Sack, who joins The Doctors , explains that one dab can be the equivalent of smoking 5 joints and a high that would normally take hours to achieve happens in just seconds, creating an extreme overload on your brain.
In addition to the health issues, there are a number of safety issues to be concerned about due to the use of butane in the drug, which has led to numerous fires and burn incidents.

Dr. Stack says that parents should not view teens dabbing in the same way that many see teenagers trying pot, explaining that it is much more concerning and could lead to serious health issues. Some of the effects of dabbing include extreme paranoia, anxiety, rapid heartbeat, blackouts, psychosis and hallucinations .

Source: Doctors TV

Quote of the day

Learn to Forgive!!!

What Are You Thinking?

Two major lessons I’ve learned from studying God’s Word on the mind and writing Battlefield of the Mind are how much our thoughts affect every single area of our lives and how much you can choose your own thoughts. That’s where Satan does all his fighting—he tries to get you caught up with any bad or negative thought. But as believers who have the Word of God inside of us, we have the tools to defeat him .
I know about this from personal experience. For many years I went to church faithfully, week after week, but I wasn’t living a victorious Christian life. I read my Bible every day, served on the evangelism board and went door-to-door telling people about Jesus because I really wanted to serve God. But even though I was doing those things, I was still miserable most of the time.
I would go to church on Sunday, fight with my husband during the week, and get frustrated with my kids a lot. I’d feel miserable, depressed, angry—like a mess—and then go back to church on Sunday. I felt like I didn’t know how to act like a “sane” human being.
Ephesians 4:23-24 says to be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], and put on the new nature…created in God’s image….
This is so important, because it’s impossible to have a positive, peaceful life and at the same time have a negative mind.
I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act. Then we can have what He wants us to have—abundant life in Christ, filled with His righteousness, peace and joy (see John 10:10 and Romans 14:17).
How Are You Supposed to Think? The first thing we need to understand is that when we become new creations in Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:17), what is normal for the world is no longer normal for us. There’s a way we’re supposed to live that reflects the image of Christ in the world.
For example, many people think it’s normal to worry, but as a Christian, worrying is not a normal way of thinking . Philippians 4:6 says we are to be anxious for nothing (NKJV). This doesn’t mean we won’t ever feel worried, but when we do, we can pray and give it to God so we can have His peace while we go through a hard time.
First Corinthians 2:16 says we have the mind of Christ . This means no matter what our circumstances may be,
we can have God’s wisdom, discernment and peace to guide our decisions in the midst of them. There are several other godly mindsets I want to mention to help you learn how to renew your mind with the Truth of the Word:
The Made-up Mind
Colossians 3:2 says to set your minds and keep them set on what is above…not on the things that are on the earth. The only way we can accomplish what we really want to do in life is by determining what God has put in our hearts to do and then setting our minds to do it. With the help of the Holy Spirit, you can make up your mind and stop overthinking your decisions.
The Humble Mind
Philippians 2:5 says to let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus…. A person with a humble mind is peaceful because they can wait on God’s timing and follow His direction; they don’t constantly struggle with wondering why or when. And a humble mind isn’t judgmental or critical of others.
The Focused Mind
We live in an age of distraction! It’s amazing how much information is coming at us most of the time through technology, the media and the busyness of the world around us. I’ve decided that the world probably isn’t going to change, so I have to change. I’m learning how to keep my mind on what I’m doing, rather than thinking about several things at once or what I want to do next.
You Can Choose. It was such a revelation for me when I realized I didn’t have to think about just anything that came into my mind. I could choose my thoughts and do my own thinking—on purpose. There is a way to have righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit…to have victory in our circumstances and not live according to what the world views as “normal.” And it all begins with renewing our minds. The choice is up to us.
So make the decision to spend time each day reading and meditating on the Word. Pray and ask God to help you understand how to apply the wisdom you discover to your everyday life. As you do your part to renew your mind, God will do His. And you’ll love the transformation that comes with having a “normal” mind—the mind of Christ

Source: Joyce Meyer